State gives $5M to pay Chester Upland teachers
Chester Upland School District has received an infusion of nearly $5 million in state aid to keep paying teachers and staff while officials work to develop a financial recovery plan for the struggling school system.
Chester Upland School District has received an infusion of nearly $5 million in state aid to keep paying teachers and staff while officials work to develop a financial recovery plan for the struggling school system.
At a hearing Wednesday, a district lawyer also told a Delaware County judge that officials will meet with charter school operators to discuss a new funding formula. He said they intend to submit the new plan by late next week.
The announcements came during a hearing in which district and state education officials gave Judge Chad F. Kenney an update on their efforts to slash charter school payments and crawl out of debt.
Chester Upland pays nearly $64 million to charter schools, which educate about half of the district's nearly 7,000 students.
Lawyers for the district and Wolf administration have blamed what they contend is an unfair funding formula, especially when it comes to special-education students. They said their plan - which included reducing charter school payments by about $24 million - would enable the district to turn a projected $22 million annual deficit into a $3 million surplus.
Kenney last month rejected their first proposal, which he said would not restore fiscal stability and did not provide enough specifics.
On Wednesday, Kenney grilled a state Department of Education lawyer over its subsidies to the district, which have gone up just $3 million since 2013.
"You're asking charter schools to be the solution. You're asking charter schools to give up $20 million and you're saying: We'll give you $3 million," he said to the lawyer, James Flandreau.
But Flandreau noted that the state provided periodic "infusions" and just approved $4.8 million in debt service payments so the district could pay more than 300 staff members who were told there would be no money for payroll when they returned to work last week.
The teachers and staff had voted to continue working even if they didn't get paid.
Dariah Jackson, a spokeswoman for the Chester Upland Education Association, said teachers and staff found out Tuesday that they would get paychecks as scheduled this week and on Sept. 23.
"Everyone was excited," she said. Still, she called the emergency funds a "temporary fix," given the uncertainty over the disputes on the state budget and education funding.
Chester Upland business manager Karen DeShullo told the judge the district's state subsidies were $85.8 million in 2013-14, $79.2 million in 2014-15, and $88.3 million in Gov. Wolf's yet-to-be-adopted budget for this fiscal year.
Even if the $88 million was approved, DeShullo said, the district would run out of money by March. If its charter bill was cut, the district would still run out of money by April and need an additional infusion of $12 million from the state to pay its bills.
If it didn't get the $12 million, the district would stop paying vendors, said district solicitor Leo Hackett, with charter schools at the top of the list.
Kenney asked what would happen the following September if they were still in debt.
"The same thing, your honor," said DeShullo.
The judge said he didn't think the last recovery-plan proposal, which also called for hiring a forensic specialist and a turnaround specialist, would help.
Depending on local taxes to pay for education in Chester Upland, he said, "doesn't work. It's broke."
